


The Monster's Child and His Sun

by ItsAutumnHereFriend



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Descriptions of blood and gore, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-05-19 04:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19349254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsAutumnHereFriend/pseuds/ItsAutumnHereFriend
Summary: Gintoki had met the sun just before dawn.  You were with him when he had met Shouyou, had stuck by him when everything came apart, and after everything had broken.  But the sun must disappear when night falls.  What will he do then?





	1. A Home In You

Chills wrack through your body and tingle at the tips of your fingers despite your insistence of coming.  A monster, they had said. Another one of those crows, they had hissed both in fear and disgust. Man-eating, monster, monster, _monster_.  

You flex your fingers as if they were frozen together.  Nothing changes. You had hoped by some luck, the bodies of the dead would magically disappear in tandem with your fingers.  Breathing deeply, the stench of the rotting corpses overwhelm you more than the sight of them.

Wading clumsily through the blood-ridden field, crows elect to pick out the eyes of the decaying corpses piled on top of each other and all the ones strewn about.  You inhale sharply as you accidentally step on someone’s back, muffling the screams rushing from your throat in a hurry. Though no one would be able to hear you if you did scream.  Not unless that _monster_ was there. 

Navigating through the blood and bodies become increasingly difficult until you can’t help but step on something -- some _body_ every few steps.  You shudder at the feeling, nearly tripping.  You take comfort in the fact that the bodies that lie everywhere barely look human.  Mutilated, faces squished and cut beyond recognition -- can you feel sympathy for monsters?  You don’t want to know.

You feel eyes on your stumbling form.  It could simply be the eyes of the dead that the crows had yet to gouge out, or the crows themselves, waiting for you to drop dead for another feast.  Pressing your heel into solid ground and not someone’s innards, you hope it’s neither of those two. You would rather it be the monster the townsfolk had spoken of.  At least then it wouldn't give you a reason to pity it.  A monster is the devil's reincarnation, isn't it?  Why sympathize with a creature born to destroy? 

Maybe you shouldn't have come here after all.  Would you, too, be a monster if you come to empathize with a monster? 

You shiver.  The eyes have not left, yet you haven't either.

Would any monster just sit there, watching potential game get away?  A smart one would, probably. Lure the prey into a false sense of security, but not enough for them to fully understand that they might just die if they stumble.  

Whatever odds you had of coming back alive seemed to decrease exponentially with every step you take.  Every step leading further in the spiral of blood. The squelch of body parts and the dried blood almost makes you turn right around and return to Shouyou.

But there is no going back now.

The clinking of a sword in its sheath is the only sound you hear before you feel its cold steel pressed upon your chest.  You breathe in a gasp. Seeing the blood in his eyes, your hands still. It was almost to complete perfection, how the colour of his eyes matched the blood strewn everywhere. 

You aren’t sure whether your catching breath is due to the blade about to pierce your chest, or the fact that a monster could be a boy.  A human boy. A human boy who is too tiny to be lifting a samurai’s sword. You couldn’t help the grin fighting its way onto your face at the sight of the ratio of boy to sword.  He needs to lift both his arms high above his head to accommodate the length and heaviness of it. Had it not been pointing at your heart, you would have let out a long laugh. Both out of the hilarity of the situation and to relieve the tension in your body.  You can’t even picture the boy laughing, let alone smiling.

Your body reacts faster than the better part of you could.  So you ask, “you’re no monster . . . Are you?”

His eyes harden, and you see a flash of life flitting in his eyes -- a life where death plays not his own part, but a role befitting that of a lover; and he flexes his hands, the sword sways away from your body.

“Are you here to die?”

His voice breaks a bit, but it is rough, as though he hadn’t spoken in a long, long while.  Gazing at him, the thought of him not being able to speak to anyone -- maybe the carcasses on the ground -- or the thought that you are the first person he’s probably seen alive and in close proximity hurt.  Whichever one hurts the most, you aren’t sure. Both hurt, and isn’t that enough to know?

“I’m here because of a monster.”  Because surely _he_ can’t be the monster.  As the sun beams down on him, you’re sure he can’t be the menace the townsfolk had mentioned.  Because Shouyou had told you a folktale of a monster and the sun. That no _bad_ monsters existed if the sun shone on them too.  Maybe you had passed the monster lying on the ground dead some time ago.  Yet he looks at you strangely now. You’re sure the boy with the blooded sword can’t be anything akin to a monster.  How can one be a monster when all it’s doing is surviving? “Have you seen it?” You press him, because he hasn’t answered and only let the song of the crows fill the gaps of silence.  

His hands tighten on the sword.  His eyes are on you but simultaneously looking elsewhere.  “Idiot,” he mumbles under his breath. Before you could retaliate, he moves his gaze to sweep at the corpses encircling you two.  “Everywhere. The monsters are everywhere.”

You hum, agreeing with the sentiment.  “But a man-eating one. A sword-stealing man-eating monster.”

He stares again, and you wonder if he had just died with his eyes wide open, not moving an inch.  It’s almost awkward meeting his gaze for so long. Looking elsewhere, he takes the chance to press into the hilt of his sword, raising the sword again, to your chest.

You raise an eyebrow, frowning.  “No, you’re no monster.” You answer his raised sword as if he had called himself a monster too.  And, perhaps he was. For a samurai, one’s sword speaks all the words one needs to say. Can a monster be both a monster and a samurai?  You wonder what Shouyou would say. 

His breath rattles, and you can’t miss the shake of his blade, not when it’s pressed against you.

“How can you be a monster when you’re just trying to live?”

And it is as if you had uttered a spell.  Everything silences. Your peripheral vision hazes until you can only see the boy with bloodied hair and a raised sword.

“How can you be a monster, when the sun is touching you too?”  You look away from him for the first time, only to jerk your head to the sun, emphasizing your point.  When you look back to him, he has a dark expression on his face. One that you can barely distinguish from the light of the sun that hits him and the shadows that had fled from his face because of it. 

The sword pushes further against your chest, only to disappear as he raises both his hands and the sword and --

A hand delicately stops the swing of the blade.  The sword rattles.

With his hair flowing, he looks down at you now.  A smile present and warm eyes gazing down at your surprised look.  “There you are. Running off again, are you?”

You shake your head, and he chuckles, a hand weighing on the top of your head.  It is as if he were weighing the world within the palm of his hand -- except it is to weigh how befitting the earth is at your feet, for a being of your own.

The both of you look at the boy clutching the sword, still poised in mid-strike.  The boy flits warily between the two of you, and having jumped further away to increase the distance, he resembles a cat either trying to escape in a dash or glaring down its opponent before it strikes.  You can’t imagine him attacking either you or Shoyou.

Shouyou smiles at him.  The boy narrows his eyes, stepping back even further.

“A monster warmed by the sun, is it?”

You don’t understand why Shouyou agrees with the rumours and calls him _monster._ The sun is clearly shining down on him -- on all of you, why call the need to survive a monster?  You don’t understand why he runs through your hair as if you were meant to warm his fingers, but searching through the eyes of the boy staring at the two of you before him, it seemed enough to not know.

It seemed enough to know that the boy called _monster_ exists right in front of your eyes.  It seemed enough to know that the boy could see you, that the press of his blade was cold.  It seemed enough to know that Shouyou had accepted a new student, long before you had run off to meet the so-called monster.  It seemed enough, to have the _monster_ lag behind the two of you, and enough for you to hold Shouyou’s hand as if he were family.  

Yet when you look back at him, the monster shifts his vision to Shouyou, then to you, as if he weren’t sure who to be wary of, nor who to trust.  His hands clench on Shouyou’s sword, pushing it harder against his chest.

You blink at him, and he meets your gaze.  Although he glares, you smile at him.


	2. Warmth and Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gintoki asks questions, and your answers befall the two of you easily. Though you aren't sure why.

The dojo bustles with children swinging their wooden swords.  Gintoki is nowhere to be found in such a place, and neither are you.

You walk with him as he heads towards the tree surrounded by large blades of grass.  Large enough to hide two mischievous brats, and large enough to make everything seem like a dream.  It’s quiet between the two of you, but the noises from the trees and the yelling samurai in the dojo surrounds the two of you in a blanket.  The both of you keep quiet, as if a pocket of stillness kept you tethered together. 

You sit down near the tree, back resting upon its birches.  The leaves sway with the wind, a dance enticing to watch. You comb through unruly hair that had flopped roughly on your lap.  Gintoki complains. You hear nothing. The sun slowly sets.

Without a moment’s hesitation, you stumble through a sentence you’ve only heard once.  “The night is always darkest before the sun rises;” and maybe the dancing leaves and the surreal feeling of the present brought those words to tumble out of your memory and into your lap.  Briefly, your hand stops stroking Gintoki’s hair.

He shifts, maneuvering his body and nearly smashes his face into your stomach in the process.  “Where’d you hear that from?”

“Shouyou.”  You say simply.  Because it had always been that simple.  

It’s silent before he speaks again.  Shouyou’s words had been delicate, but it garnered something more than just hope.  A slight edge you had never thought you’d hear around him.  

As the silence stretches longer, you wonder if Gintoki’s earliest memories were that of the quiet and stillness of a conquered battlefield.  You don’t want his own thoughts to wage war on itself; but his voice comes out in a frail whisper, masked to be monotone, but had failed miserably.  “What if you meet the sun before it rises?”

You blink.  Is that possible?  “Then you must be really special,” you trail off.  Unsure. Yet there was something comforting in his tone, as if he meant to console himself.   

The hand that ran through his hair slowly shifts to caress his cheek.  Gintoki looks at you, and you aren’t sure what his eyes are trying to tell you.  You aren’t sure you want to know. But his eyes search yours. A question, and so you answer: “then you aren’t a monster.”

He turns away, eyes shut, but you huff, pushing his cheek so that he looks at you again.  But he doesn’t. He stares somewhere away from your eyes, but on your bodice.

“You aren’t a monster if a monster can meet the sun when it’s darkest for everyone else.”  You aren’t sure if you said that right, or if you got your feelings across, because Gintoki still hasn’t looked at you.  Still looking at a spot far away from you, even though he lies on your lap.  

“Why would the sun meet a monster?”

You answer immediately, as if the answer were burning your tongue.  “To warm him up, duh.” He makes a move to complain. You speak over him.  “What else would a sun do? To nurture. It wants to show its love to him, too.  Because he doesn’t believe he deserves it.”

This time, Gintoki looks at you.  He looks at you as if he can’t really see you, as if he believed you were a figment of his imagination.

You run a hand through his hair once more.  “Not all monsters are monsters,” you say softly.  As soft as the leaves tumble onto each other, and you aren’t sure if he hears you.

This time, silence chooses not to befall the both of you.  A familiar colour of hair, a warm smile, and Shouyou’s voice drifts with the wind.  “Sometimes monsters gain their name through survival. Though at that point, are they really the monsters we fear?” 

You continue to stroke at Gintoki’s hair, but he lifts himself up, sitting to stare up at Shouyou as he comes to replace your hands with his.  Gintoki’s fingertips touch yours. 

“The sun quite favours the ones put in the dark.  The sun fights to give warmth.”

You find yourself nodding, though you aren’t sure what he really means.  It simply felt right. It sounds like something out of a folktale. Your gaze drifts away from Shouyou’s to stare dazedly at the clouds passing by.  

Something more.  It feels like there’s more to his words.  It feels like there’s a secret he’s trying to tell you, but can’t say it directly.  

Gintoki and Shouyou’s conversation becomes a low hum as you place your hand over Gintoki’s.  Gintoki’s words hiccup slightly, and Shouyou laughs despite himself.

Though he quickly controls himself, his smile becomes more sharp.  “Skipping practice, hm?”

“No,” Gintoki says blandly.  “Finished already.”

Shouyou sighs, shaking his head but grinning all the while.  “Why don’t you two come with me?” It’s not a question, it’s a demand; and as Gintoki complains about  _ trust! This is an issue about trust, you just don’t trust me, do you!  _ You stand, lugging him up with you.  

Your fingers weave through his as Shouyou leads you back to the dojo, passing Takasugi and Zura.  Takasugi has a shit-eating grin on his face when he sees you two trailing behind Shouyou, obviously thinking that you both are in trouble.  Zura elects to ignore the scene, mumbling random numbers each time he swings his bokuto -- one, two, three, five, ten, one hundred… 

The sight of Shouyou’s  _ office _ \-- although he hates calling it that.  Too stuffy, he says… Or was that Gintoki? -- is unfamiliar to you, but clearly familiar to Gintoki as he sits on Shouyou’s desk, feet swinging and thumping the wood with his heels.  You place yourself on the floor. Shouyou brings both his hands on the table next to Gintoki’s legs. He brings his face close to Gintoki, prompting silently for an explanation. Gintoki, as always, is undeterred and shrugs at his gaze.  Shouyou sighs, berating him for always sneaking off and skipping practice.

“A monster can’t touch a monster’s sword,” Shouyou begins and trails off suddenly.  “But the sun touches everything. It is vital that the sun chooses to.”

Shouyou looks at you now, stepping away from Gintoki.  His stare matches the look Gintoki is giving you. You frown.  You aren’t sure if it’s jealousy that stems from the fact that they seem to be in sync -- that they know something you don’t -- or if you just want to wipe off that smug look Gintoki had adopted.

Shouyou smiles, seeing your expression.  He moves to sit next to you, placing you gently in his lap.  “The sun has a choice. It doesn’t know it had chosen one, but it did.  A samurai mustn't make promises they can’t keep.”

You look toward Gintoki, but he isn’t looking at you.

You’re not sure what Shouyou means, but you lean into him, enjoying the feeling of warmth and family for now.


End file.
